Travel Habits of Americans: Half of the Country Hasn’t Taken a Vacation Day Yet In 2014

Rafat Ali, Skift

- Oct 06, 2014 6:00 am

Skift Take

The overworked, under-vacationed and under-traveled American is a cliche, for a reason. This country needs to fix its vacation policies at work, and the travel industry needs to figure out better ways to get Americans to take a break.

— Rafat Ali

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The travel habits of grossly overworked Americans continue to become even more anemic, as we enter mid-decade in the 2010s.

We have been documenting this through our “Travel Habits of Americans” series over the last two months, and in case you missed previous surveys, these are just some indications:

Now we have more proof in our seventh survey in this series. We asked Americans, using Google Consumer Surveys, “Heading into Fall, how many vacation days have you taken so far this year?” The majority, almost 51 percent, say they haven’t taken a single vacation day in 2014 so far.

About 15 percent of Americans say they have taken more than 10 vacation days this year, while the rest is split between those who took fewer than 5, and those who took between 5-10 vacation days this year.

The other topline result from the breakdown, as you will see in the charts below: Women, young, old,and the lower-income Americans are the ones taking the least amount of vacations.

Important: This survey — not served to Skift users — was administered to 1008 members of the U.S. adult internet population in October 2014 through Google Consumer Surveys. The methodology is explained here.

» Breakdown by sex, Chart 2 below: More American women than men have taken no vacation days this year. On the other hand, more men have taken more than 10 vacation days in the U.S. this year than women.

» Breakdown by age, Chart 3 below: The younger Americans are more likely to not have taken a single vacation day, or fewer than five vacation days, this year.

» Breakdown by region, Chart 4 below: People in the U.S. West are slightly better at taking vacation days off in 2014 than those in the rest of the country.

» Breakdown by region, Chart 5 below: Surprisingly, urban Americans have been better at taking vacation days this year than the rest of the country.

» Breakdown by income, Chart 6 below: The lower the income of Americans, the fewer vacation days they have taken this year, while richer Americans have taken more.

» Breakdown by parental status, Chart 7 below: Non-parents in America are more likely to not have taken a single vacation day this year.

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